Saturday, July 20, 2019

Fifty years ago.............................


Apollo 11 communicates with Houston from the surface of the moon

Success.................................


..................................................................the old-fashioned way:

"Practice frugality. Work hard. Save and invest your money."

As agents of change go........................


.........................this guy has to be in the Top Ten.

via

Ann Althouse has a very successful..............


...............................blog because she writes smart stuff:

That's all very interesting about the Electoral College, and if you read the whole article, you'll see a lot about polls about "approval" of Trump, which are used as a proxy for how people will vote. But in an election, you have to vote for one or another candidate (or abstain), and you might disapprove of all of them.

That is, withholding approval doesn't mean you won't vote for Trump. It's hard to approve of Trump. He's not exactly approval-seeking. You might like the results he's getting and still feel you want distance from him. You might vote for him because you want more of the same or because you think his opponent will take away some of the things you like and still be able to say that you "disapprove" of the person known as Trump.


True this..................................


"If you want to make a difference, you’ll probably need to find your own lane."

-just a sample of the daily wisdom Seth Godin offers for free

Awakenings.............................



On that day, the wind didn’t just blow around Johnson but through him, to a part of himself he previously didn’t know was there. He calls it a “baptism of spirit”: in that instant, he felt like his molecules were taken out, swirled with the air, and rearranged so that he’d forever be aligned with these environments and yearn for them. “I had no idea at the time it was going to be the most significant moment in my childhood,” Johnson says.

-Excerpted from this story, which led me to Sheldon Johnson's wikipedia page, where this quote was found:  "I facilitate astonishment. I didn't join the Park Service for money; I get paid in gasps."

via

Fifty years ago...............At Woodstock


Sly & The Family Stone.............I Want To Take You Higher

Friday, July 19, 2019

Thursday, July 18, 2019

History is tricky...................................


Ben Carlson offers an interesting and read-worthy perspective on the study of history.   Reminds me of Winston Churchill's comment that history was going to be kind to him, because he was going to write it.

As a side note:   Carlson is quite a bit younger than your faithful blogger - he wasn't around for Apollo 11 and the first man on the  moon, I was 17.   Going back through the mists of memory, what amazed me most wasn't that we beat the Russians in the Space game, or even the landing on the moon.  What amazed me was the getting back.  Some pretty smart people accomplished some really brave and remarkable feats.  They all deserve to be honored by history.

Fifty years ago..............At Woodstock


Canned Heat........................................A Change Is Gonna Come

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

News you can use......................




According to the National Weather Service, more than half of flood-related drownings take place after a vehicle has been driven into flood water. “A mere [six] inches of fast-moving flood water can knock over an adult,” the agency warns. Think your car is any safer? “It takes just 12 inches of rushing water to carry away most cars and just two feet of rushing water can carry away SUVs and trucks.”

-cut and pasted from here

A prerequisite for.....................


.................................successfully navigating the 21st Century:

"an immune boosting sense of humour."

-Nicholas Bate

Fifty years ago..................At Woodstock


Canned Heat.......................................Going Up The Country

Monday, July 15, 2019

I just know they were checking out our tiger lilies...


In (faint) praise of hippies..................


...........................Some of my best friends were hippies.  I wasn't much of one, although I did own a fabulous pair of rainbow bells.................

Some readers have asked me to elaborate on my perspective on youth culture now vs. the 1960s. To me, campus culture today seems idiotic. I think that the hippie culture of my youth also was idiotic, but it was not as aggressive. If you weren’t a hippie, the hippies didn’t try to shut you up or get you fired.

-Arnold S. Kling, as  he opens this blog post

Live (sort of) from the Rijksmuseum..........


Preparing to restore, publicly, Rembrandt's Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, also known as The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburchaka The Night Watch:



The back story may be found here.

via

Call it an investment.....................


When you've done well and another has benefited by it, why like a fool do you look for a third thing on top—credit for the good deed or a favor in return?

-Marcus Aurelius,  Meditations, Book 7:73

      So why on earth do you need thanks or recognition for having done the right thing?  It's your job.

-Ryan Holiday, from today's entry in The Daily Stoic

Fifty years ago.............At Woodstock


John Sebastian.......................................................I Had A Dream

Sunday, July 14, 2019

Hot streak declared.....................


........................................Bloggery at its finest.

Opening paragraphs..................


      Cavalrymen remember such moments:  dust swirling behind the pack mules, regimental bugles shattering the air, horses snorting and riders' tack creaking through the ranks, their old company song rising on the wind:  "Come home, John! Don't stay long.  Come home soon to your own chick-a-biddy!"  The date was October 3, 1871.  Six hundred soldiers and twenty Tonkawa scouts had bivouacked on a lively bend of the Clear Fork of the Brazos, in a rolling, scarred prairie of grama grass, scrub oak, sage, and chaparral, about one hundred fifty miles of Fort Worth, Texas.  Now they were breaking camp, moving out in a long, snaking line through the high cutbanks and quicksand streams.  Though they did not know it at the time—the idea would have seemed preposterous—the sounding of "boots and saddle" that morning marked the beginning of the end of the Indian wars in America, of fully two hundred fifty years of bloody combat that had begun almost with the first landing of the first ship on the first fatal shore of Virginia.  The final destruction of the last of the hostile tribes would not take place for a few more years.  Time would be yet required to round them all up, or starve them out, or exterminate their sources of food, or run them to ground in shallow canyons, or kill them outright.  For the moment the question was one of hard, unalloyed will.  There had been brief spasms of official vengeance and retribution before:  J. M. Chivington's and George Armstrong Custer's savage massacres of Cheyennes in 1864 and 1868 were examples.  But in those days there was no real attempt to destroy the tribes on a larger scale, no stomach for it.  That had changed, and on October 3, the change assumed the form of an order, barked out through the lines of command to the men of the Fourth Cavalry and Eleventh Infantry, to go forth and kill Comanches.  It was the end of anything like tolerance, the beginning of the final solution.

-S. C. Gwynne,  Empire Of The Summer Moon:  Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History

thanks Rob

On mental health...................


Get out of your head. It’s a bad neighborhood.

-Jennifer Pastiloff

This rule of reason......................


“Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry.” 


-Charles S. Peirce

Fifty years ago...............At Woodstock


John Sebastian..........................................Darling Be Home Soon